BACKGROUND Burns occur disproportionately within low-socioeconomic populations. The Western Cape Province of South Africa represents a middle-income setting with a high rate of burns, few specialists and few burn centres, yet a well-developed pre-hospital system. This paper describes the burn cases from a viewpoint of operational factors important to pre-hospital emergency medical services. M...

T U.S. government has mandated that, in a catastrophic event, metropolitan areas need to be capable of caring for 50 burn-injured patients per million population. In New York City, this corresponds to 400 patients. There are currently 140 burn beds in the region, which can be surged up to 210. To care for additional patients, hospitals without burn centers will be used to stabilize patients unt...

UNLABELLED The skin is the largest organ of the human body consisting of several layers possessing different properties and performing different physiological functions. The loss of skin integrity caused by a trauma or disease may provoke acute physiological and immune disorders that may even be fatal. The following properties are primarily taken into account when choosing the appropriate burn ...

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of keratinocyte growth factor (KGF) treatment on the expression of wound-healing-related genes in cultured keratinocytes from burn patients. METHODS Keratinocytes were cultured and divided into 4 groups (n=4 in each group): TKB (KGF-treated keratinocytes from burn patients), UKB (untreated keratinocytes from burn patients), TKC (KGF-treated keratinocytes from co...

In 2004, as many as 444 nuclear energy reactors were operated in 31 countries worldwide. Most of them burn classical nuclear fuels, thus either uranium dioxide UO2 containing natural uranium, uranium enriched by U-235 or, less often, the so-called MOX (Mixed Oxide) fuel, which is a mixture of UO2 and PuO2 . The use of nuclear fuels and introduction of their novel types requires detailed knowled...

Failure to adequately address the increased levels of inflammatory mediators, catecholamines and corticosteroids central to the hypermetabolic response post burn injury can lead to catastrophic results. One of the most important perturbations is provision of adequate and early nutrition. The provision of the right balance of macro and micronutrients, along with additional antioxidants is essent...

infection is the primary source of mortality in burn patients. one of the main treatment methods of burn wound infections is topical antimicrobial therapy, in which drugs have to permeate a dead tissue called eschar. unfortunately, most antimicrobial agents can not permeate eschar in therapeutic levels. surprisingly, permeation properties of this barrier and effects of chemical or environmental...

Background: Thermal burn injuries impair the host defence system. Hence, in the present study, we aimed at investigating the changes in the number and phenotype of peripheral blood lymphocyte populations (T, B, and natural killer cells) and their subpopulations in patients with thermal burns and determining the relationships with different sizes of total body surface area (TBSA).    ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Klebsiella pneumoniae is an opportunistic pathogen responsible for up to 10% of nosocomial infections. The emergence and spread of multidrug resistant K. pneumoniae, mostly due to the production of extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBL) and carbapenemases, is often responsible for antibiotic treatment failure of these infections. We compared the antibiotic resistance pr...

UNLABELLED We tested the hypothesis that resistance to d-tubocurarine (dTC) is more intense in muscles closer to, than distant from, burn, and is related to the expression of immature and total acetylcholine receptors (AChRs). Anesthetized rats received approximately 4% surface area burn over the tibialis muscle of one leg with the contralateral leg serving as control, or approximately 45% of t...